As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Current Wireless Universal Serial Bus (WUSB) hubs have used Ultra Wide Band (UWB) radios for wireless communications. WUSB is a wireless technology extension of Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports. The UWB wireless technology used for WUSB wirelessly extends a USB hub, allowing a user to connect a laptop or other device to a WUSB hub using a UWB wireless link, instead of making this connection using a cable. A wide variety of USB devices can then be connected to the USB ports provided by the WUSB hub including standard USB peripherals, such as printers, scanners, keyboards, mice, and other USB connected devices.
Bluetooth based communications are often used for wireless audio products. Bluetooth is a short-range wireless communications protocol that allows two devices to communicate with each other after proceeding through a device pairing procedure. Bluetooth is used, for example, in cellular phones to connect headsets and in a computer system to connect a mouse and a keyboard. Bluetooth has also been used to connect audio speaker systems to a base system to provide audio outputs.
FIG. 1A (Prior Art) shows an environment 100 in which a personal computer (PC) 101 is configured to communicate with an audio system 112 through a Bluetooth radio and to communicate with a WUSB hub 119 through a UWB radio. As depicted, the personal computer 101 has a USB subsystem 102 and an audio subsystem 104. The USB subsystem 102 connects to a UWB control block 103 including, for example, the UWB software stack for handling the UWB communications for the USB subsystem 102. The UWB control block 103 is also connected to the radio circuitry 106 of the personal computer 101 and communicates using the UWB radio circuitry 108 through antenna 109 to form a UWB link 111.
The audio subsystem 104 is connected to a Bluetooth control block 105 including, for example, a Bluetooth software stack for handling Bluetooth communications for the audio subsystem 104. The Bluetooth control block 105 can also included related information such as audio parameters and usage profiles. The Bluetooth control block 105 communicates using the Bluetooth radio circuitry 107 within the personal computer radio circuitry 106 to form a Bluetooth link 110 through antenna 109.
As depicted, a single antenna 109 receives input from both the Bluetooth radio circuitry 107 and the UWB radio circuitry 108. The single antenna 109 allows the USB subsystem 102 and the audio subsystem 104 of the personal computer 101 to communicate with a Bluetooth (BT) audio system 112 and a separate WUSB hub 119 through this single shared antenna 109. It is noted, however, that the BT and UWB radio circuitry may use separate antennas (not shown in FIG. 1A) to communicate with the BT audio system and WUSB hub, if desired, rather than using the single shared antenna 109.
The WUSB hub 119 communicates using antenna 118. The UWB radio circuitry 120 is coupled to the antenna 118 and to the UWB control block 121 including, for example, a UWB software stack for handling the UWB communications for the WUSB hub 119. The UWB control block 121 is also coupled to a USB port hub controller 122, and the USB port hub controller 122 provides a plurality (N) of USB ports 123 to which external USB devices can be connected.
The audio system 112 communicates using the antenna 117. The Bluetooth radio circuitry 115 is coupled to the antenna 117 and to the Bluetooth control block 113 including, for example, a Bluetooth software stack for handling Bluetooth communications for the audio subsystem 112. The Bluetooth control block 113 can also include related information such as audio parameters and usage profiles. The Bluetooth control block 113 communicates with the audio subsystem 114 to output audio information to the speakers (SPKRS) 116 and/or receive audio information from the microphone (MIC) 126.
FIG. 1B (Prior Art) shows the device pairing steps involved in using the systems shown in FIG. 1A (Prior Art). The process begins when the personal computer system is booted up in step 130. In step 131, the user inputs required information for WUSB device pairing, and then WUSB profiles are launched in step 132. User input is required again for Bluetooth (BT) device pairing in step 133. In step 134, Bluetooth audio profiles are launched, again requiring user input. The process ends at step 135. As shown in FIG. 1B (Prior Art), therefore, separate pairings are required for the WUSB hub device and for the Bluetooth device.
One solution has been proposed to add isochronous audio support to WUSB. WUSB protocols do not efficiently handle audio/video connections that are isochronous or otherwise sensitive to time-of-delivery. Adding isochronous support to WUSB, however, can use a large amount of bandwidth of the WUSB link. For example, if a laptop were using a WUSB hub to connect to USB peripherals in addition to supporting an audio system through the UWB link, the audio system will likely use a large portion of the wireless link bandwidth to handle the audio delivery, thereby degrading the performance of the other USB connected peripheral devices.
While Bluetooth can better handle isochronous data flow to support audio/video peripheral devices, Bluetooth is relatively slow. Solutions have been proposed to add improved speed to Bluetooth communications. To improve this speed, the proposed Bluetooth 3.0 protocol describes the use of a UWB radio, rather than a standard Bluetooth radio, along with a Bluetooth software stack to improve communication speeds. However, this solution does not provide support for USB peripherals.